This invention relates to athletic footwear for aerobics.
Within the last decade, tremendous developments have been made in the construction of athletic footwear. In the early stages of these recent developments, much emphasis was placed on improvements for running and jogging activities. These running shoes have been adopted by the public for many other athletic activities. Although running footwear does often provide certain benefits for other activities, many of these different activities in fact require different characteristics from the footwear.
In aerobic exercise there are many movements not encountered during running and jogging events, and movements that are accentuated in extent and/or rapidity and/or frequency, as contrasted to other athletic activities. Examples of these are repeated, rapid lateral thrust movements and frequent substantial vertical flexing of the foot. Aerobic exercisers spend considerable time on the forefoot. Consequently, a study of footwear and foot movements during aerobic activities has demonstrated the undesirable tendency of the foot to move independently of the shoe far too often, many times even moving partially or totally off of the shoe support. The foot also tends to shift about laterally within the shoe, and in general to move before the shoe moves in response, after which the shoe moves in the direction of the foot in a delayed action, without always terminating in conformity with the foot. In short, the shoe does not stay "in tune" with the foot. Some potential results are general lack of comfort, lack of security and confidence during the exercise, blisters, pain and possible injury. Increasing popularity of aerobic style exercise increases the odds of difficulty.
There have been some prior efforts to incorporate features for keeping athletic shoes on the feet during vigorous activities. These have been in specialty athletic shoes for sports such as basketball and gymnastics, basically to bind the shoe more securely to the foot. These include the use of wraparound gore straps emanating from the heel region of the shoe to fasten tightly at the tongue, to tightly bind the shoe onto the foot, and straps that encircle and bind the midfoot and connect by Velcro(R) fasteners at the instep region. There has also been a totally elastic racing shoe for running races.